Bicknell on Article XXXIII: Of Excommunicate Persons, how they are to be avoided

• Tt is one of the results of some three centuries of married clergy in England that in face of all evidence many to-day refuse to credit the stories of wide- spread moral corruption in the monasteries at the time of the Reformation. Cp. Coulton, Mediaeval Studies, 1st Series, i. and vi.

§3. The Church of Christ exists for a definite purpose, to proclaim the truth as it is revealed in Christ, to minister the sacraments ordained by Him, and also to declare and interpret His will and enforce obedience to it upon her members. There- fore, like any other society she has the right to expel from her fellowship those members who wilfully set at naught her decisions or are disloyal to her principles.

(a) In the Old and New Testaments we find this right exercised by the Jewish Church. Whatever may have been the custom in earlier days the practice of excommunication is found quite early from the days of Ezra onward (Hz. 108). In the time of our Lord exclusion from the synagogue was the regular punish- ment for serious offences: by it the offender was deprived of all religious privileges. It is clearly alluded to in the Gospels (Lk. 672, Jn. 972, 124, 167). Our Lord gave authority to His Church as the new Israel to ‘ bind’ and to ‘ loose,’ ¢.e. in current Jewish language to ‘declare forbidden’ or ‘declare allowed ’ (Mt. 161° and 1818). This authority inevitably carried with it the corresponding duty of warning and, in the last resort, ex- cluding those who refuse to accept such decisions. Like Israel of old, the Church is under obligation to enforce the divine law within her borders. In Mt. 181? the offending brother in the last resort is to be brought before the ecclesia. If he refuses to hear the ecclesia he is to be treated ‘as the Gentile and the publican,’ 7.e. as one who by his own act has put himself outside the people of God. The meaning is perfectly clear, whether ecclesia in the first instance meant a local Jewish synagogue or the Christian Church. Our Lord lays down a general principle which the Christian Church has embodied in her system of dis- cipline. She can only enforce obedience by spiritual penalties such as depriving the offender of certain privileges of member- ship. The final penalty is that of depriving him of membership altogether.

In the Epistles we find instances of the exercise of this power. The most important is that given in 1 Cor. 5’7. St. Paul first reproves the Church at Corinth for tolerating the presence of a member known to be guilty of grave moral sin (vv. ’). He then, in virtue of his authority as an apostle in the name of Christ, declares him excommunicate and calls on the assembled Church to associate themselves with him in carrying out the sentence

(vv. °). The object of this action is twofold: first the prefer- vation of the whole body from moral infection—‘ a, little leaven leaveneth the whole lump’ (v. °); and secondly the ultimate salva- tion of the offender,—‘ to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus’ (v. 5). The penalty is medicinal. The phrase ‘deliver unto Satan’ sounds strange to our ears. The meaning is that the Church is the covenanted sphere of God’s blessing and protection, ana therefore to be put out of the Church is to be put out into that sphere where the power of Satan is unchecked (contrast Col. 11%). Satan is expected to use his power and visit the offender with ‘the destruction of the flesh,’ ¢.e. probably death. Through this judgment it is hoped that by God’s providence the sense of his sin may strike home to the man’s soul. There is evidence that in the early Church spiritual offences were expected to be and in point of fact were punished by sickness and death (cp. 1 Cor. 118°, where the profanation of the Eucharist has this result, and the cases of Ananias and Sapphira, Acts 5, and Elymas, Acts 13). Satan is regarded as inflicting such sufferings (cp. Heb. 214, Acts 1038, Lk. 1316, 2 Cor. 127). To hand a man over to Satan, then, is to expose him to them. We to-day rather lay stress on the hope that by loss of privileges the offender who is excom- municated may be brought to penitence.

A second case occurs in 2 Cor. 2°”, referring almost certainly to an entirely different person. This man apparently had been excommunicated by the Church at Corinth in obedience to St. Paul’s instruction (‘this punishment which was inflicted by the majority,’ v. ®, ep. v. %) for an offence against St. Paul himself (this seems implied in vv. > and 1°). The excommunication succeeded in bringing the offender to repentance, and St. Paul is now able to urge his complete forgiveness. Once again he claims to act ‘in the person (or presence) of Christ,’ and Satan is mentioned as likely to gain an advantage (v. 14) if the penitent is not brought back again within the safety of the Church.

A third case is that of Hymenaeus and Alexander, who ‘ made shipwreck concerning the faith,’ apparently by teaching ‘ that the resurrection is passed already’ (2 Tim. 218): ‘whom I

• Cp. ‘ Let him be anathema,’ #.e. accursed in 1, Cor. 16 and Gal. 1 °-°, which seems to include both ecclesiastical censure and spiritual condition.

delivered unto Satan, that they might be taught not to blaspheme’ (1 Tim. 112°). The further mention of Hymenaeus in 2 Tim. 21718 shows that the sentence had failed to bring him to repentance.

Other references to excommunication occur. Tit. 31°, ‘A man that is heretical after a first and second admonition refuse.’ 2 Thess. 34 Ro. 161’, and 1 Cor. 5°” hardly go beyond for- bidding friendship with the disobedient. 2 Jn. 1°” discounten- ances the reception of false teachers: this refusal of fellowship is practically excommunication. In 3 Jn. 1° it would appear that Diotrephes had misused this same power against faithful Christians. In early days fellowship in the Church was all- important. A solitary Christian life in a pagan world was almost impossible. We must notice that in Scripture the grounds of excommunication include false teaching, immorality and insub- ordination. To draw distinctions between faith and morals and worship and to exclude any one of them from the discipline of the Church is contrary to all Bible teaching. In each case the Church exists to guard and propagate the teaching of Christ and she cannot refuse the duty. She has no authority to dispense men from obedience to the will of her Master.

(b) When we turn to the early Church we find the power of excommunication regularly employed.* Without it the Church could never have maintained her Christianity in the loose moral atmosphere of heathen society and amid the multitude of con- flicting systems of religion, philosophy and magic. In the mission field to-day the same need for strict discipline is recog- nized by all Christian bodies. Accordingly, we find a regular course of procedure in order to prevent abuse. Offenders were not excommunicated unless they were convicted either by their own admission or by the evidence of trustworthy witnesses. A single witness, even if he were a bishop, did not suffice. For the first three hundred years the penalties of excommunication were purely spiritual, the shutting out from communion and from membership in the Church. Unhappily from the time of Theo-

dosius onward, excommunication began also to involve certain _ civil penalties. The Church did not shrink from invoking the aid of the secular arm. So, too, in the Middle Ages, as a result of the confusion of Church and State, excommunication involved civil as well as ecclesiastical pains and penalties. Hence its true nature became obscured.

(c) It is clear, both from our Article and from the Prayer- Book, that the Church of England intended to retain excommuni- cation. The service for the burial of the dead may not be used ‘for any that die… excommunicate.’ Excommunications are to be read out after the Nicene Creed. The rubrics before the Communion Office direct the curate to refuse communion to any who is ‘an open and notorious evil liver, or have done any wrong to his neighbours by word or deed, so that the Congrega- tion be thereby offended,’ or again to ‘those between whomfhe perceiveth malice and hatred to reign.’ The names of such persons are to be sent to the Ordinary. ‘And the Ordinary shall proceed against the offending person according to the canon.’ The canon in question is the 109th of the canons passed in 1604 ordering notorious crimes and scandals to be certified to the Ecclesiastical Courts. Other canons of the same series deal with the excommunication of various types of offenders. The 68th forbids the reading of the Burial Service over those lying under ‘the greater excommunication.’ This shows that the law of the Church of England continues to recognize the old distinction, dating back to quite primitive times, between ‘ the lesser excommunication,’ 2.e. the depriving of the use of the sacraments and exclusion from divine worship, and ‘ the greater excommunication,’ 7.¢e. entire exclusion from the divine society, such as that contemplated in the words of our Article. Further, both the canons and the Article make it clear that sentence of excommunication is not to be inflicted or removed at the arbitrary will of any individual, even a bishop. In each case there is to be ‘a judge that hath authority thereunto.’ It is presumed that, as in old days, the Church has her own courts in which she administers her own laws.

In actual practice the right of excommunication has almost entirely fallen into disuse. This is largely the consequence of the unhappy confusion between civil and ecclesiastical punish- ments. Quite rightly questions of marriages and wills and other

matters that used to be decided in the ecclesiastical courts have now been withdrawn into the civilcourts. Further, by an Act of George III, happily abolished, excommunication was enjoined as the punishment for contempt of court. But even though this same act recognizes the right of ecclesiastical courts to continue to pronounce spiritual censures for ecclesiastical offences, the right sense of Church discipline has become impaired by its long admixture with secular legal processes. As a result the Church has largely become identified with the world. Her standard is supposed to be not the teaching of Christ and the law of God, but the conventions of society and the law of the State. Hence any attempt to enforce the rule of Christ where it goes beyond the civil law is viewed as sacerdotal interference. No doubt, on the whole, both the conscience of the individual and public opinion tend to keep persons, who are guilty of open profligacy, away from the sacraments and services of the Church. But there are other sins than those of the flesh which ought to be so intolerable to the conscience of the Church that she cannot endure the presence of those who wilfully persist in committing them. Such sins as those of making money at the cost of others’ health and happiness, or dishonest methods in business ought to be branded as unchristian.* We need a new recognition of the practical holiness demanded from all members of the Body of Christ. This is not to fall into the Puritan error of limiting the Church to those who are actually holy. So long as a man is making an effort after holiness, even with many lapses, there is room for him in the Church. But there should be no place for those who do not even desire to live up to the standard of Christ and who actively set at naught Christian principles. The power of excommunication has been abused in the past, but that is no reason why it should be neglected. What is needed to-day is an awakening to the sense that churchmanship carries with it definite obligations. On Excommunication see : Arts. in D.C.G. and Smith’s D.C.A.

Goudge, J Cor. pp. 36-42. Strong, Christian Ethics, Lect. VIII.

• Think, for instance, of the enormous moral weight that would accrue to the Church if some wealthy employer of ‘sweated’ labour after due trial in an ecclesiastical court were expelled from Church membership, unless he agreed to alter his methods,

Notes

• Hg. Irenaeus, Haeres. iii. c. 3, 34, who tells the stories of St. John and Cerinthus and Polycarp and Marcion. Cyprian, Hp. 41, c. 2, and 59, cc. 1, 9, 10, 11, and De Oratione Dominica, c. 13, where he speaks of those who by the commission of any grievous crime are shut out from communion and for- bidden the heavenly bread.